His sleepy, bemused, heated brain wandered, in dazed fashion, back to his father's sermon of that morning.

Abraham and Isaac! Abraham and Isaac! Abraham and Isaac! Suddenly, as though through the flaming glass something had been flung to him, an idea came.

Perhaps God, that huge, ugly God was teasing the Coles just as once He had teased Abraham.
Perhaps He wished to see whether they were truly obedient as the Jampot had sometimes wished in the old days.

He was only, it might be, pretending.

Perhaps He was demanding that one of them should give up something--something of great value.